China's biggest listed steelmaker, Baoshan Iron & Steel, reported a nearly 65% plunge in its third-quarter net profit, undermined by a fall in steel prices. The company, known as Baosteel, said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange that it made net profit of $188 million, down from 3.8 billion yuan in the year-ago period. Baosteel is a subsidiary of state-owned China Baowu Steel Group, the world's largest steelmaker by output. Net profit over the first nine months of the year fell 29.56% from the same period a year before to 5.88 billion yuan, it said. Disappointing demand for steel amid a persistent property downturn and weaker-than-expected consumption from the infrastructure sector had hammered steel prices in the third quarter, squeezing steelmakers' profit margins, analysts said. In the first nine months of the year, the average price of imported iron ore dipped 0.8% while steel prices slid 7.67%, the state-backed China Iron and Steel Association said last week. Losses among Chinese steelmakers totalled 34.1 billion yuan from January to September, official data showed. Demand, however, showed signs of stabilising after a raft of stimulus measures unveiled in late September boosted sentiment, Baosteel said. Baosteel produced 12.56 million metric tons of pig iron and 13.3 million tons of steel in the July-September quarter, bringing the total in the first nine months of the year to 36.68 million tons and 39.61 million tons, respectively. Export orders were 4.66 million tons in the first three quarters, it said. China made 768.48 million tons of crude steel in the first nine months of this year, down 3.6% year-on-year, official data showed.
